


Heartbeat

by Aithilin



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Mentions of canon-typical violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-03
Updated: 2020-06-03
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:47:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24524098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aithilin/pseuds/Aithilin
Summary: Sometimes, Nyx wonders at the sensation of his own heartbeat.
Relationships: Noctis Lucis Caelum/Nyx Ulric
Comments: 7
Kudos: 41





	Heartbeat

**Author's Note:**

> Prompted over at my Tumblr.

There was a strange calmness to the sensation. 

It happened often in the seemingly silent aftermath of returning from a tour of the siege lines. The howl of fiery winds and air crackling around him was just as deafening as the shouted orders, the dying screams, the mechanical crash and fade of defeated MTs; but the silence when he was away from it all was worse. It was all consuming and exhausted, the calm quiet that left him and his squad dumbfounded as they made the long trundle home in the military trucks. 

Nyx had always hated that quiet. Despite the reprieve it offered and the exhausted muttering of those not able to sleep in the truck, he hated the calm that smothered them all after the chaos of the battles outside the Wall. They were still dusty and bloody, the harsh red clay of Cavaugh clinging to their uniforms with their sweat and blood, the pulse of pains that had been hastily treated behind the camp lines a constant reminder of the steady pulse that kept him alive. 

He hated that sensation. The hollow rattle of his own heartbeat, counting it out as he watched the peace of Insomnia fall like a tranquil curtain on the horrors behind them, as if he expected it to stop. 

And he did expect that sometimes. 

There were days when each beat was matched by the burn of magic still cooling in his veins, or he marvelled at the bloody bandages that had stemmed the flow of his own blood from a wound that he had watched flow in time with his pulse hours before. There were days when he wondered if Crowe, with her head nestled against his chest, could hear what must be some irregular thrum and thump of his heart as the adrenaline finally left him a shaking mess. But he always made it home, his heart in one piece and still beating to his own little rhythm. 

But the sound would fade as they moved along and the illusory curtain formed by the Wall settled into place around them. 

Then it was all a rush again. 

New assignments, new orders, leaves and absences that were approved or shifted from the dead to the living as wait lists cleared. There was an exhausted relief to be home— showering in the locker rooms, tossing uniforms with ruined protective spell work aside for repair and slipping into the comfort of old civilian clothes. There was a rush of laughter of Glaives seeing each other as shifts changed and assignments overlapped, as the lockers filled and the quiet shock of the battles fought in the days before was lost to the jovial offers of drinks and food and promises to sleep in a real bed again. 

There was the chaos of the city streets when they were finally released back into the wild. The collar of borrowed magic tight around their throats, but the leashes back in place. The tethers to the Crystal through the King was a constant tug they got used to as recruits, a shared bond between them all as they moved like a pack to their little burrows and dens in the shadow of the opulent Citadel. Their hearts all beat as one in those moments, when the exhaustion was traded for elation at just being alive. 

Except for Nyx. 

He knew that his heart beat a little bit differently. It fluttered here and there, burned with a more youthful magic that was still untrained and raw, wild. 

And when Noctis met him at the steps of the Glaives’ own little fortress, phone in hand and two iced teas to stave off the summer heat waiting for him, Nyx felt that flutter. That hopeful, joyous little peace that settled in the shadow of whatever he had just survived. 

The city would rush around them, and he wouldn’t notice it. The blur of cars on the main roads, the shouts of people rushing from one thing to another, the deafening promise of life around him held captive by the shimmering Wall domed above them; none of its register where Noctis smiled in greeting. 

It was a very different sort of calmness that settled after that. 

There was no shadow of the siege, the dying gasps of the Lucian stalemate beyond the Wall. There was no deafening shouts or screams or orders echoing in his head with that strange hollow beat in his chest. 

Noctis’ own magic filtered through his veins— stronger, younger, burning with an unrefined and unrestricted power— and burned through him with every steadfast and calm beat that he could feel in echo at night. 

“How are you so calm?” Noctis would ask, breathless and grinning in the dim light of Nyx’s own apartment. In the privacy Nyx’s obscurity afforded them, away from the prying eyes of Shields and friends. 

“What makes you think I’m calm?”

“Your heartbeat.”

“That,” Nyx would answer as Noctis shifted and settled until they were wrapped around each other again; “is just a lot of practice.”

But in the silence of the apartment— despite the rumble of traffic, the shouts of the people out on the street, in the units around his own, in the bar below— Nyx liked that strange sensation that came with Noctis pressed against him in sleep. That odd hollow beat that haunted him as the illusion of peace descended that felt more real now. 

There was no illusion about the calm he felt in those moments.


End file.
